1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for delivering and receiving mail, particularly electronic messages, such as electronic mail (email) and voice mail as used in electronic messaging on communications networks. More particularly, the invention relates to an addressee-defined addressing system and method for creating and using mail addresses in a mail system.
2. Description of Related Art
Postal services and mail have long been important to the functioning of civilized societies. With the rise of communications networks and electronic messaging, and particularly, the increased use of computer networks such as the Internet, the volume and importance of email have become very important, perhaps even eclipsing traditional postal services. However, being in a sense merely another form of mail, email has become plagued with problems and limitations that are also found in traditional mail systems. In some cases, problems with traditional mail systems are exacerbated in email and other electronic messaging systems.
One such problem that vexes users of traditional and email alike is the bulk distribution and receipt of unsolicited “junk” mail. General mail systems are by nature freely available to all potential senders of mail, thereby permitting a free flow of information. Consequently, certain senders of information, such as commercial advertisers, political advocates, and fundraisers, find it advantageous to send unsolicited mail in bulk to many addressees, even though the percentage of addressees that will respond to the unsolicited mail, i.e., the “response rate,” may be quite low. Generally speaking, the incremental cost of sending unsolicited mail is related to the response rate that the mail sender must achieve to justify the bulk mailing. In traditional mail systems, the incremental cost of mailing has limited unsolicited mail somewhat. Junk mail may be bothersome to those served by traditional postal services, but it is rarely a serious problem. In a sense, postal service junk mail may even benefit postal users, because the postage fees generated by the high-volume mailings contribute to funding the postal system.
However, some email or messaging systems are “freemail” systems in that they are open mail systems in which senders are not charged based on the quantity of mail sent and the incremental cost of sending a message is essentially zero. In a freemail system, there is essentially no economic limit to the volume of unsolicited mail that a sender may find profitable to send. Internet-connected email systems are a primary example of a freemail system. Consequently, junk mail has become a serious problem on many email systems, in many cases threatening to overwhelm entire systems and often causing the closure of individual email accounts. Various automatic filtering methods have been devised for identifying and segregating or deleting unsolicited junk mail, but all of these systems suffer from the disadvantage of requiring substantial system overhead for performing the identification and filtering tasks. Furthermore, such methods are often easily circumvented by those desiring to send junk mail. Because not all unsolicited mail is undesired, filtering systems also prevent the delivery of some desired mail. Accordingly, junk mail remains a serious unresolved problem on email systems.
The deluge of junk mail on email systems has led to another problem. Knowing that many websites will sell their email address as part of an address list, thereby leading to the receipt of undesired junk mail (sometimes called “spam”), users may provide separate, essentially unused email addresses when registering at commercial sites, or in the alternative, avoid registering any address with websites at all. Such practices may prevent the user from receiving unsolicited mail, but also prevent much desirable electronic communication, and may cause a decrease in desirable electronic commerce. For example, a user may provide an unused email address to his phone company, out of fear that the phone company will sell the address to others, and then fail to read an urgent message from the phone company warning of a shut-off of service for lack of payment. For further example, a user may decide to not visit a website because an email address is required to access certain content, and then fail to discover that the website has interesting content, or offers other valuable products, that the user would have been willing to pay for. Thus, these examples illustrate how concerns over unsolicited email may indirectly hinder electronic commerce and the use of email systems for important communications.
Another problem common to both traditional and electronic messages services is sorting of mail based upon the category of the sender. Mail addressees of both types of services have to sort their own mail. For example, a common secretarial task is to separate junk mail from important business correspondence. It would be much more convenient for addressees if mail were delivered in bundles sorted according to category of sender, for example “commercial mail from known accounts,” “mail from XYZ Corp,” “mail from friends,” “mail from family,” “mail from unknown senders,” and so forth. Not only would such sorting save the addressee time, such sorting, if carefully executed, might effectively eliminate junk mail from the mail system. Of course, motivating a traditional postal service to sort mail in this way is not a trivial task. Email systems generally do sort mail, on the other hand, but either use sorting methods of relatively small benefit (for example, by alphabetizing mail by sender name), or are subject to the limitations and problems associated with the prior art email filtering systems described above.
Therefore, a mail system that overcomes these limitations and problems of prior art systems is desired. It is further desired that the mail system be readily adapted for use with email systems in use on wide area networks such as the Internet, and similar electronic messaging systems.